Gravicon, a bubble bursting Windows Phone game

Gravicon is a new game for our Windows Phone 7.x and 8 devices that is a bubble burst styled game with a new approach. You still have to match three or more of the same styled bubbles but with Gravicon, the bubbles act like bubbles.

That is they float to the bottom of the screen, as a bubble would, and if you rotate your Windows Phone around they shift and bounce around with the movements. Gravicon is an interesting play on a classic mobile game that definitely grows on you.

The main menu for Gravicon has options to jump into the game, access the game's settings, share the game, exit the game and view the about screen. Settings for Gravicon included sound/music on or off and turning on/off social network sharing.

There are two game modes with Gravicon, Time Attack and Target Race. Time Attack is simply a game where you try to score as many points as possible before the timer hits zero. The Token Race has a star token at the top of the screen and a you have to burst bubbles to work the token around the screen to reach the finish line (checkered bubble) as quickly as possible.

Each arena is slightly different with obstacles to navigate around. One arena has a saw blade that grinds up the bubbles, taking them out of play before you can collect the points.

Game play is the same regardless of the game mode. You have a constant supply of bubbles with various colored symbols that slowly fill the screen. You have to tap on a cluster of three or more of the same symbols to burst and remove them for points.

The bubbles in the cluster must be in contact with each other. The nice twist to Gravicon is that you can rotate the phone to shift the bubbles around.

There are a few bonus bubbles that can help you and hurt you. You have one that blows just about every bubble on the screen into smithereens and a Medusa bubble that freezes your bubbles so they won't burst.

Gravicon does have an online leaderboard and while it's a very nice game, it lacks one feature that would help it tremendously. A help section.

Gravicon isn't a difficult game to pick up on and much of the game can be figured out by trial and error. In the least, a reference section explaining what each bonus bubble does or the objective to each mode is would help.

Gravicon is a refreshing play on bubble burst. Animations are nice, game play challenging, and all in all, it's a nice addition to the Windows Phone gaming library. There is a free trial version of Gravicon that is limited to the first four gaming arenas. The full version is running $1.49 and opens up the full selection of arenas.

There are some cool features here, but I wish these indie games wouldn't look so amateurish. It gets frustrating only being able to choose between generic big budget titles and low grade games that look like student projects.

The best games on iOS come, not from the EA's and Gameloft's of the world, but from quality indie developers. Unfortunately, for whatever reason Windows Phone isn't attracting those guys.

There's a difference I think between Indie studios - who can still have impressive budgets - and hobbyists, typically a handful of people writing stuff for the love of it in their spare time, using Creative Commons assets or creating their own.
Breaking into the iOS market requires a bigger commitment (but with the potential for a bigger return), so it doesn't surprise me that the percieved quality of titles there is higher.
Sorry I couldn't afford a better artist than myself ;-)